Why are so many players switching from Nike football boots _Lewandowski, Neymar & Sterling

Robert Lewandowski to Puma and Raheem Sterling to new balance .

Why are so many high profile players leaving Nike for other brands for a long time ?

Now , Nike has been top dog when it comes to endorsement deals .

When it comes to providing signature color ways for variety of players .

When it comes to hype and marketing in general , they do a really good job at that .

However , there seems to be a trend as of late where a lot of their high profile athletes seem to be leaving the brand of the question is why is this happening ?

And is it a good or bad thing for Nike ?

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Now , unless you've been living under a rock for the last two months , you've probably heard that Neymar left Nike and signed with Puma was a record breaking endorsement deal in terms of the amount of money that Puma had to pay Neymar , but it seems to be paying off in that the amount of interest around the Puma brand is perhaps greater than it has ever been , certainly in the last decade .

So it seems to be working out for them , which I'm happy about because Puma at the moment especially is making some really good football boots .

However , this seems to have sparked a little bit of a trend because we now have Robert Lewandowski and Raheem Sterling two big names within Nike that were both headline players for the now discontinued new Nike Phantom Venom lead where neither of them are wearing its replacement .

The Phantom G T Sterling isn't even wearing Nike boots anymore .

He's wearing a prototype , it's completely white it out but it does to me look very new balance .

See a lot of people think I script these videos but trust me , if I scripted this video , I wouldn't end a sentence on some stupid rhyme like that .

Now , I know a lot of you guys really enjoy these boots spotting videos , but I don't make them for every abnormal situation .

It's typically limited to somebody wearing an unreleased football boot that is highly anticipated or in this case , brand switches from big name players that you probably weren't expecting to see .

The reason why I'm telling you this is because I post a lot more boot spotting content on my Instagram , which is S R four U underscore Josh , it will be linked down below .

And when I posted about Lewandowski specifically , there were a ton of comments suggesting that the reason why he's looking to switch from Nike to Puma is because he doesn't like the new Phantom G T , which I think is a fair observation to make because if you've been watching the matches , he's been playing in the now discontinued Phantom Venom .

But with that said , I also don't think this is the main reason why he might be looking towards a brand switch .

Although I think it must be said that Lewandowski is coming off of a very high scoring and successful season with Bayern Munich where they basically won everything and he did so while wearing the Phantom Venom .

And of course , given the circumstances of COVID-19 where last season ended and there was a very short break until the start of the new season .

I'm sure he was looking for at least some kind of familiarity or maybe it's a superstition thing or maybe he's just one of those guys that doesn't get used to new boots all that quickly .

I think those are far more motivating factors for him , not wearing the new Phantom G T rather than him just straight up disliking the boot entirely .

And as I always say as well , he's a pro , he's getting custom boots from Nike anyways , I'm sure it's just a situation where he's not happy with his own custom version of the Phantom G T as of yet .

Or maybe Nike is working on something different for him .

In the meantime , he's not going to play in boots that I'm sure he feels are going to hinder his performance .

Both , all that said very recently in training , Lewandowski was spotted wearing a blacked out pair of Puma ultra 1.1 , the latest and super underrated speed boot from the Puma brand , which would lead me to believe that he's not necessarily leaving Nike , but he's shopping around the other options because in matches while he's not wearing the current boot that he probably should be wearing or at least that Nike would like him to wear .

He's still wearing fans and venom in regular color ways where you can see the Nike swoosh , he's wearing blacked out boots that would suggest to me that he is out of contract and basically a football boot , free agent not looking to give anybody free advertising what he wears in a match versus what he wears in training are two different things entirely .

Even under contract pros can pretty much train in whatever they want as long as they're not advertising other brands .

Although I'm sure there's some more technical wording in the contracts that they sign .

Nonetheless , it's just training .

We don't have to buy into it that deeply , but given what we just saw with Neymar , it would suggest that he might be on his way out from Nike with Puma being the brand that looks to be the most interested .

Although it must be said with all of these endorsement deals , it is just that an endorsement deal , it's an exchange of money from a brand to a player to have that player wear and represent your products in a positive light .

Pumas obviously had a big year signing Neymar if they could steal away Lewandowski as well .

While I don't think that's going to have the same impact that a guy like Neymar would have .

It's still a pretty big name within the Nike brand that would turn some heads as for Sterling , unlike Lewandowski , he appears to be out of contract entirely effectively a football boot free agent where he's been seen wearing blacked out Phantom venoms in him match as well as more recently these white out football boots that we don't know the brand of exactly .

But based on the way that these look , it's very new balance ish in terms of its design , probably something up and coming if I had to guess because it doesn't really look like any current models .

But if I had to guess probably like a next generation of the new balance , if you're on a , you're on the seven , if you will , which would make sense for a player like Sterling based on the marketing that I'm sure new balance would like to do with him .

Now , Sterling , I think is a little bit more of an interesting situation versus Lewandowski because there's been a lot of rumors around what his next boot contract would be basically for the last two years .

At one point in time , it was rumored that Nike was going to start a Jordan brand line of football boots , which we know they've done the Jordan PSG collaborations , but physically Jordan brand football boots that were different from the Nike boots , not just Colorway variants .

He was going to be the rumored headline guy for that , obviously , that never happened and it doesn't look like it's going to happen either .

He was at one point rumored to be signing with Puma as well , which did make some sense given that Manchester City does wear Puma kits and typically brands will go after players that play in clubs that wear the same brand of kit , not all the time , but that's kind of an ideal situation just from a marketing and advertising perspective , but now it looks like he's wearing new balance boots and that might seem like a little bit of a weird place for him to sign .

But again , I'm sure new balance is probably offering him the most amount of money , which is what's ultimately , I think going to be most attractive for him because regardless of what brand he signs with , they're going to be able to provide him with custom boots that I'm sure he's going to be comfortable with and you also have to consider with new balance , they just lost the Liverpool kit deal to Nike and that is a huge amount of money that they would have normally had to pay to Liverpool in order to of course , provide the kit .

So they now have all of this extra money in the budget for the sake of advertising and marketing that they're probably going to look to dump into signing a big name player .

Raheem Sterling seemingly is that guy .

But to circle back to the big question that I posed at the start of this video , why is Nike letting all of these big name players lead ?

Well , the answer to that question is actually kind of funny because the general response that I've seen from a large amount of the football boot community is that Nike is dropping the ball by these big name players and they very well might be .

But at the same time , I feel like this is far more strategic than anything else where if you look at what Nike has done as of late , they seem to be focusing way more on youth rather than players that they've had within the brand for a very long time that I don't want to say that they've used them and they're done with them at this point .

But I think at this point in Lewandowski's career and at this point in Sterling's career , Nike has , I guess the knowledge and insight to know how much value they truly bring at this point in time .

And is it really likely that these players are going to skyrocket to another level and bring them that much more value ?

I would assume that they're probably thinking no , which is why they would probably like to spend the same amount of money on more young players more up and coming talent that could potentially be the next big thing rather than spending it on players that nobody is really going to be excited about .

If they continue to keep paying them this money , signing , a new player typically will have a much bigger impact than re signing a player that's been with the brand for a very long time .

And you also have to consider that when Nike goes and signs a young upcoming player , they're going to be able to sign that player for significantly less money than somebody who's already established .

Where in the case of Lewandowski and Sterling , where while I'm sure they've already made tons and tons of money through endorsement deals with Nike as well as other brands .

They're both at points in their career where they probably feel like they're in their primes and they probably want even more money than they were already getting paid before these current contracts expired or were set to expire .

And I'm going to assume that Nike is just not willing to pay that premium for these players that they already know what they're going to get out of them typically , what they're going to get out of them from a marketing value perspective and to play devil's advocate for a second .

I think it's a fair argument to say that by Nike letting guys like Lewandowski and Sterling potentially walk from the brand , it gives huge opportunities for somebody like new balance and somebody like Puma , as we saw with the Neymar situation to draw a lot of attention from themselves and take attention away from Nike and that's totally going to happen .

There's always going to be a lot of hype again around a new signing like I talked about , but I really think that Nike is banking on the long term potential of the players that they have in the brand rather than the potential short term hype that other brands are going to see by signing a new player away from Nike in the age of social media where hype comes and goes so quickly .

I think Nike is starting to realize that they're better off maybe chasing hype or their potential hype is much greater with younger up and coming players than it would be for just paying tons and tons of money for players that have been in the brand for a long time and aren't really drawing that much attention anymore .

But that's just what I think .

Let me know what you guys think of this situation down below in the comment section , Lewandowski to Puma Sterling to new balance .

Do these seem like good deals to you ?

I'd be really curious to hear all of your opinions and of course , if you have any questions , feel free to leave those down below in the comments as well .

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Other than that guys , thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one .